Sunday, June 7, 2009

“Assassination Should be the Last Resort to a Discussion”

Okay, it’s been a while, but I’ve come across a doozy of a video on YouTube. This commentary is brought to us by Pastor Michael Salman from Harvest Christian Fellowship, aka YouTube ID harvest 777123, aka YouTube ID kryptologos, in his video entitled The Death of Abortionist George Tiller.

Leaving out pieces that are not necessary to what I have to say, Pastor Mike’s commentary is as follows:

“We want to give our condolences, our true, true condolences to the family of George Tiller. And with that, we’d also like to also give our condolences to the family of Saddam Hussein, and our condolences to the family of Hitler. And I don’t say this with condescending attitude …. I believe assassination should be the last, the last resort to a discussion. . . If we, as Christians truly, truly believe that abortion is murder of a baby, if we really believe that, then we must also put George Tiller as a mass murder. [Hence his condolences to the families of Hussein and Hitler]

“We don’t believe in murder, but we do believe in killing and, I think, in this case, it wasn’t murder as much as it was killing [and the difference would be…?]. Scott Roeder was one of the only people who really, really believed that what George Tiller was doing was murder, and he didn’t just sit there and twiddle his thumbs. He actually went out there and killed the guy who was killing babies. [Apparently, vigilantism is okay. So, if I really, really believe that fundamentalists are dangerous and should be annihilated, it would be okay for me to kill them as I come across them, Pastor Mike?]

“We give our condolences to the family of Scott Roeder who has to now suffer because he did what he really believed. Scott Roeder had no choice. He had his convictions; he had his faith; he understood and he believed what was going on here, and he had no choice but to act upon his true beliefs. It’s sad that death had to occur and there always should be an alternative, rather than assassination, but in some cases we’re left with no choice, or Scot Roeder was left with no choice. Many people have a higher tolerance level and are long suffering. In this case, Scott Roeder did not. He could not handle any more and his convictions brought him to do what he needed to do. On the day of judgement, I believe that Scott Roeder will be saved. George Tiller is going to burn in hell because he is a wicked man, a man who practises sin. The Bible is truth and all man is a liar [sic]. The Bible says that the ones that practice lawlessness will not inherit eternal life.”

There you have it, folks. Scott Roeder, a murderer, who is ignorant of the facts about abortion and the work of George Tiller, is going to be saved by Jesus, while George Tiller, who saved the lives of countless women, is going to hell. This is Christianity??

Let’s talk about a few of the stories from George Tiller’s files:

1. A 9-year-old girl who had been raped by her father. She was 18 weeks pregnant. Carrying the baby to term, going through labor and delivery, would have ripped her body apart. Dr. Tiller took her for free.

2. A New York mother who had been referred by an obstetrician to Tiller after learning, in her 27th week of pregnancy, that her soon-to-be son was “so very sick” that, once born, he’d have nothing more than “a brief life of respirators, dialysis, surgeries and pain.” In-state doctors refused to perform an abortion.

3. A woman who was referred to Dr. Tiller in her 25th week of pregnancy after finding out that her soon-to-be son had severe spina bifida and very severe hydrocephalus. He would never had understood anything about himself or the world. The would-be parents concentrated on what was best for their son. Dr. Tiller stopped their son’s heart and then induced labor. They were able to view him afterward and saw that his head was severely enlarged from the hydrocephalus.

4. A women whose soon-to-be daughter had two very severe heart defects. She was missing the chamber of her heart that fed her heart oxygen. This was causing the chamber above the missing one to swell up with the blood. Her heart was not pumping and made that chamber 2-3 times the size of her entire heart. This condition is very difficult to diagnose prior to the 20-week ultrasound because the heart just isn't big enough to see in detail. She would not have survived natural labor and would have to have been delivered via C-section. She would have to be immediately hooked to life support. She would have required a minimum of three surgeries to even enable her to take her first breath. After the surgeries her lungs would have still only been at a quarter of normal capacity and she would have been brain damaged from the lack of oxygen. They were not sure how long she would live after the surgeries. The only thing that was certain was that she would have had a very short life that would have been spent in and out of hospitals. The parents did not want to put their child through the torture of surgeries, constant hospital visits and (if she made it long enough to walk) to watch her sister run and play from the window because that is something she would never be able to do. They could also not put their other daughter through being constantly thought of second because they had a child fighting for her life only to have her taken away at a young age. They decided not to proceed with the pregnancy when the mother was 24 weeks into her pregnancy.

That is the work of Dr. George Tiller and doctors like him. It is not a case of “killing babies.” It is a case of saving the lives of the women and sparing the children from ongoing untold pain and torment. Anti-abortionists only look at saving the lives of babies, but they don’t look at what those lives would be like for the children and their families.

People like Pastor Mike and Scott Roeder disgust me. I don’t care if they wish to believe in imaginary gods, but it is wrong to enforce their beliefs onto others, particularly when they don’t know what they are talking about. Just look at the above words from Pastor Mike. He hasn’t a clue. He thinks it’s okay to kill people if your tolerance for them is too low, but it’s not okay, and therefore murder, to prevent the suffering of innocent children. That’s disgusting!